Sonder Union

In this wide-ranging conversation, Owen sits down with fellow "reluctant lawyer" Pat Patino to explore the tension between intensity and minimalism, the challenge of getting past the 90% threshold, and what it means to live an impractical life.

Topics discussed:

The realization that intensity might be a feature, not a bug

Why both hosts stopped identifying closely with being attorneys

The Chinese literati and the lost art of being mult...

Have you ever noticed that when leaders of organizations talk very loudly about making change, almost nothing meaningful changes?

Anastasia Boyko is a rare true changemaker and she was gracious enough to take a beat and talk with us about a whole bevy of topics from her unique vantage. Anastasia was born in Soviet Ukraine, made her way to Utah with her mother before the wall fell, worked her way to Yale Law and Manhattan Biglaw...

Tony Albrecht joins us for a master class in trolling me on TSwift before we inevitably jump into a long discourse on creativity and the lunacy of creatives.

No more need be said. Enjoy.

Find Tony on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-albrecht/

Visit CONTENDER: https://contenderllc.com/

Robb Gilbear messaged me several weeks back and remarked how we were living on opposite ends of the child-rearing spectrum. I knew immediately that I had to have him join Sonder Union to talk through all the feels. I can't tell you how soothing it is speaking with Robb, although I suspect you'll get a sense from listening to this episode.

You can find Robb here:

1. LinkedIn


2. GrowthHabit


3. Die Before...

Some episodes of Sonder Union are a little serious and dour. I love those episodes, but this one certainly isn't one of them. Chris Sellers joins me, in his Trilby, to talk all about creativity, the way we torture and forgive ourselves, and the way we interact with the stories other people want to write for us.

Check out Chris at all of these places:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/c-s-sellers/

https://www.css...

Murray Gottheil joins Sonder Union to discuss how to think about work, retirement, and surviving a career in law. One of the most interesting figures in the legal corner of LinkedIn, Murray is as funny as he is opinionated. In other words, my kinda people.

You can find Murray here:

https://www.murraygottheil.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/murray-gottheil-58787b1/

Kyle Holden joins Sonder Union for a wide-ranging discussion between two folks with ADHD. This means there are many threads that seem incoherent that do get pulled together after what seems like too long a time. One of the things I love about the ADHD brain is that we can see connections between and among things that get incorporated in unpredictable ways in stories and what appear to be meandering discussions but end up being anyt...

If you know me at all, you know that I have a book problem. I love them. I collect them. I study them -- and I don't mean the words in them (though I do that too), but the physical objects. You won't see me with a Kindle any time soon.

In this episode of Sonder Union, Toni Serofin joins us to talk about books, music, and art. It was a thoroughly enjoyable conversation with an absolutely fascinating woman.

...

After a bit of a paternity leave of sorts, we're back with the one and only Graeme Johnson. Graeme is hands-down one of the more erudite folks in the legal community and I love talking with him, because I always come away learning something interesting and new.

You can find Graeme on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnstongraeme/

And you should check out what he's up to at https://www...

John Glicksman joins Sonder Union for this episode, in which I pepper him with questions about parenthood, music, confidence, and humility. He asked me if there was anything he needed to do to prepare and I said "Nope!" He was an absolute sport as I steered the conversation places that he had no warning of.

John is one of the smartest and most humble people I know and he brings that energy in this episode.

Making this podcast is such a joy: I just get to spend time picking amazing people's thoughts. This episode features Charley Mann, one of the nicest and most quietly insightful people I know.

Charley is a law firm business coach and he's damned good at that. I'm not super interested in that, though, for the purposes of Sonder Union. So we talk about his background in acting, the nature of performance, and ...

What's it like to talk with a friend for the first time in 23 years? Not because you had a falling out, but simply because life happens. Will it be like you just saw each other, or will it be awkward and weird?

Luka Poulton was kind enough to run this experiment with me and we have some answers to that riddle, at least for us. YMMV.

Luka and I had a pretty wide-ranging discussion and I'm pretty c...

What a treat it is to speak with Dr. Theodora Ziamou! Theodora is a behavioral psychologist, and as you might expect, a keen observer of people. We have a wide-ranging conversation touching on language, culture, and change.

You can find Theodora on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drtheodoraziamou/

If you're interested in helping your customers make better decisions, you might want to visit https://www.enlexis...

What do you talk about when you've got a guy who's won one of the world's toughest races on your podcast? Well, raising children, writing and reading books, and, yes, why doing hard things isn't about the hard thing, really, so much as about breaking bread with our inner animal.

Paul Watkins is a delightful guest: full of expected and unexpected wisdom and a wonderful sense of humor about things. He is able to a...

Charley Mann has "coffeesodes" on his podcast – short narrative episodes in between his interviews. I guess this is similar, except not really. Helpful description, I know.

If you don't want to hear a story about miscarriage or pregnancy loss, I would skip this one.

Sarah Ennor and I both have ADHD. Although we didn't intend to talk almost exclusively about ADHD, it just kinda happened ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It was an absolute blast trading stories with Sarah and I suspect you'll find it pretty interesting too. Sarah has played Aussie Rules Football for Team Canada, worked as a badass lawyer for a large bank, opened her own business, and has made it a mission to speak about ADHD in the professi...

Happy New Year and welcome back to Sonder Union. We have a treat in this episode, with Lenor Marquis Segal returning to discuss why losing things is bad, the impact of Covid, and, of course, writing.

Lenor was a guest on Episode 3, The Irish Goodbye. She was a tremendous guest, and I was a tremendously shitty host. I kept cutting out during recording, leaving her hanging in the room, and then managed not to record the last 50 m...

We're rounding out 2023 with our 10th episode, something of an achievement for a podcast. Most don't make it this far, but my own dumb obstinance has Sonder Union rolling!

Episode Ten is something a bit different: there's no guest today, so you're stuck only with your humble host, who shares some reflections on where Sonder Union has been and where it hopes to go in 2024.

Please rate and review! Until next y...

Sonal Soveni missed having the type of creative community she felt at home in, so, like the badass she is, she just went ahead and decided to create it. In this episode of Sonder Union, we explore creativity, what happens when creativity is suppressed, how our families give context to our pursuits (even if we might not recognize it), and the importance of having creative spaces that make exploration and mistakes okay.

If you ar...